New Roll | Street Art (Patreon)

Hello! This is a roll of Kodak Portra 160 that my friend Chirasul sent me. It was in an older-style metal canister with no date on it, so I assumed it was fairly expired and shot it at ISO 80. Here it is on Flickr.

Most of this roll is just more street photography from around Seattle; I'm still going through color toning a lot of my Scotland stuff (and I still need to finish my Pride shots...) but this roll was pretty easy because Panda scanned it and I just had mild adjustments.

Articles I read recently that were worth checking out (but notably not fun to read):

James Dobson, Godfather of Child Abuse, Finally Dies by Sam Thielman for Forever Wars. A fitting obituary for a man whose life was dedicated to wiping out my people.

3 Kids. 2 Paychecks. No Home. by Brian Goldstone for The California Sunday Magazine. This article is from 2019, but Brian re-posted it recently on Bluesky and it remains frustratingly relevant. He got on my radar with his recent book There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homelessness In America, which I need to read, but in the meantime his back catalog of articles is incredibly well-researched and told. It's just depressing, fair warning.

The Prison Is Open by Susan Aboeid for The Baffler. An overview of how the US's prison-industrial complex has been honed to a horrific razor edge of repression in the Middle East, undoing the promises of progress of the 2010s.

This roll also, incidentally, has a current events link in it - here's Seattle City Councillors Joy Hollingsworth (District 3) and Alexis Mercedes Rinck (citywide) cleaning the (city-applied, anti-graffiti) gray paint off of the (street art) mural of Saint Rat on Cal Anderson's reservoir pump building.

Saint Rat is a local street artist's creation as part of a series of "Hot Rat Summer"-themed installations that went up around Capitol Hill in the summer of '24. This incredibly detailed mosaic-tile artwork was the sole one to survive (removing it was too difficult, and paint overtop can be easily stripped away). This building gets repainted maybe twice a month; it is immediately covered in tags and street art again every time, and usually, someone will strip the gray paint off of St. Rat each time it gets re-tagged.

St. Rat finally achieved protected status after people got tired of the city covering and recovering it and complained to city council, at which point Hollingsworth and Rinck went out to clean it. I went down to say hi to Rinck, who is the sole progressive council member we have right now.

The whole thing raises a broader debate about what is "legitimate" street art and what the city will still prosecute as illegal graffiti, because no actual distinction was made when the decision was made to restore St. Rat. Technically speaking, Hollingsworth (whose voting record absolutely sucks) is in favor of fining herself $1,500 for breaking anti-graffiti ordinances, since she's historically been very anti-street-art.

Seattle's absolutely terrible mayor, Bruce Harrell, has dedicated so much of his platform to removing graffiti from the city that it is one of his touted successes as mayor (despite the fact the city itself says there's more of it than there was when he took office). For what it's worth, he got trounced in primaries by a candidate who was focusing on things like housing and adding more shelter beds.

Our even worse city attorney, Ann Davidson, has actually said that it's a serious concern of hers before the World Cup for "safety reasons"; as she is a Republican, this is much higher on her list of concerns than, ostensibly, an anti-immigration police state rounding up people. For what it's worth, she got trounced in primaries by a candidate focused on things like "the anti-immigration police state rounding up people".

Anyway, given my work, my sense of style, my social and political beliefs, and everything else about me, you can likely guess how I feel about street art.

Hope everyone's have a lovely weekend! Vicki <3